Environmental Concerns for Transgenic Plants: An Overview

Abstract

The emerging issues of food security and nutritional security have led to the development of newer technologies in agriculture sector over the years. The conventional plant breeding approach leading to the release of several potential high yielding varieties of different crops contributing to global food security is not keeping pace with global population expansion over the years. The intervention of technological developments in agriculture has led to landmarks in the form of 'green revolution', 'gene revolution' and 'evergreen revolution'. The major limitation of conventional plant breeding is the availability of narrow gene pool which has led to the emergence of transgenic technology having immense potential to avail wider gene pool without any sexual barrier.The transgenic technology is now well established technology leading to the release of several commercialized transgenic plants globally, though several issues have been raised time to time. The acceptability of the transgenic technology has always been questioned owing to biosafety concerns, risks associated with non-target species, possible threat to biodiversity, possibility of gene flow, perturbation in soil biota and tendency of developing resistance among pests for disease resistant transgenic plants.The so called environmental concerns of transgenic plants need to be scientifically addressed case by case so as to explore the tremendous potential of transgenic technology for crop improvement.The present status of transgenic plants, potential applications, environmental concerns, gene containment strategy has been discussed in this review paper.